


I Happen to Like New York

by ChancellorGriffin



Category: White Collar
Genre: Anal Play, Anal Sex, Angst with a Happy Ending, Awesome Elizabeth Burke, Bisexual Neal Caffrey, F/M, Hurt Neal Caffrey, M/M, Multi, Oral Sex, Peter Is a Beautiful Dumb Idiot About His Own Emotions, Post-Finale, Post-Series, Smut, There's No Tag For Sexy "I Thought You Were Dead For 2 Years" Angst But There Should Be, Threesome - F/M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-06-16
Updated: 2017-06-18
Packaged: 2018-11-14 17:43:40
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 10,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11213031
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChancellorGriffin/pseuds/ChancellorGriffin
Summary: "Peter Burke is an ordinary guy, a by-the-book guy, a sweatpants, desk job, mows-the-lawn-on-Saturdays guy.  He was a rule-follower all his life, until Neal Caffrey showed up and casually turned everything sideways, but this has always been the one rule that was so ironclad it was impossible to break it.  It isn't that he has some kind of a rigid policy about not cheating on El; it's that the notion of cheating on El has genuinely never occurred to him.  An incomprehensible, alien thought.  To say Peter Burke had a rule about fidelity would be like suggesting a horse has rules about not flying.  Things are either in our nature, or not.This is why, for seven years, for all that time, until just this very moment, today, Peter Burke didn't know."_________________________________Post-finale.  Two years after the worst day of Peter Burke's life, he arrives home to find a very-much-not-dead Neal Caffrey in his living room, and suddenly the heavy aching thing inside his chest he's been too dumb to figure out on his own since the day Neal walked into his life begins to make sense.  (Thanks to El, who's one step ahead of him, and sees no reason why everyone can't play nice and share.)





	1. Peter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [glitteration](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glitteration/gifts).



> HAPPY BIRTHDAY SARAH, here's your birthday Patreon fic! Thank you for making me watch this show and giving me a new dream OT3!!! xoxoxo

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> “Where you used to be, there is a hole in the world, which I find myself constantly walking around in the daytime, and falling in at night. I miss you like hell.”  
> \--Edna St. Vincent Millay.

He doesn’t tell Elizabeth.

There are a lot of reasons, he runs them over and over in his mind as he lies awake at night next to her, listening to the soft sound of her breathing.  He tells himself it’s because he doesn’t want to get her hopes up.  That’s sensible, right?  He tells himself it’s not worth the hassle of getting sent back to that damn trauma therapist, the woman with white hair and an irritatingly soothing voice he was forced to spend an hour with every Monday for the first six months after it happened.  He tells himself it’s because he’s an FBI agent, and he needs to act like one. His whole world is about evidence and facts, and if it were anyone else but Neal Caffrey he wouldn’t believe it himself.  Nothing to go on but a faded, bent Queen of Hearts, an unsolved burglary at the Louvre, and the fact that he hasn’t seen Mozzie in the park in more than six months.  But that’s not enough, not nearly enough, if he said it out loud he’d sound like Mozzie.   He tells himself he has a reputation to think of, that this would hardly be the first time he was accused of a total lack of emotional distance about his C.I. (his former C.I.? His late C.I.?), so he should be cautious about opening that can of worms again without something that would hold up in front of Jones.

He tells himself all of these things, and dozens more, and every single one of them is perfectly true.

But a reason isn’t some kind of unstoppable force that makes us do something.  It’s only the story we tell ourselves afterwards about _why_ we did it.  Reasons are just words we say over and over again in our heads, to convince ourselves we made the right choice, that we haven’t gone crazy.

So Peter’s reasons are true, and real, but they aren’t why he doesn’t tell Elizabeth about the storage unit and the Queen of Hearts and who he thinks really sent the wine.

The truth is that he doesn’t tell Elizabeth because he can’t bear the way she’ll look at him as she watches him say it.

The look has been in abeyance for awhile now, she hasn’t needed it as much as she used to, it’s gone back in the drawer, mostly forgotten.  But for the first few months afterward, he couldn’t escape it.  He would come home from work and pause on the porch for a few seconds, taking a deep breath to compose his face so he looked, if not exactly cheerful, at least calm; then he’d open the door and she would be standing there, with that look on her face.  A look that told him Diana had called today after she had walked in on Peter in the file storage room downstairs, gripping a wooden shelf so hard his knuckles turned white, choking back messy, ungainly sobs.  Or he’d be walking down the street holding her hand, on the way to dinner, trying to feel normal, trying to have a night out with his wife, trying to remember what living felt like, and then he’d stop short in front of the gleaming windows of a men’s department store, frozen in place until the gentle tug of El’s hand summoned him back to earth; and then he would look at her and see it on her face, that quiet, sad comprehension, and he would know that she knew he had seen a face that wasn’t his own reflected back at him, cocking a fedora with a mischievous grin, and it had hit him so hard and so deeply that he couldn’t go on until it had passed. 

It made him miserable, that look.  She loves him so much, she's so worried, so weary, so full of her own grief as well as helping to carry his, she's trying so hard, and he can't said out loud to her, “Stop looking at me like that,” or it will break her heart.  But he had to make her stop looking at him like that.

Because El _sees._

That's the real story.  The reasons he tells himself, lying awake at night, staring up at the ceiling, one hand resting protectively over his wife’s belly as she curls up against his side, aren’t the why.  _El_ is the why.  El and all the things she knows that Peter has never told her. 

Things about Peter, things about Peter and Neal, that Peter's not ready to know yet.  Things about why, in a life full of so many deaths, this particular one has left such a shattering hole in his heart.  Things about why Peter never really wants to make love anymore, why everywhere he goes he kept one eye open for Mozzie, why he sometimes starts crying and can’t stop, why everything in their house that Neal Caffrey ever gave them has quietly vanished into cardboard boxes in the corner of the attic.

There iss a big, raw, aching Something inside Peter Burke, and he isn’t ready to call it by name yet – maybe he never will be – but every time El gives him that gentle look of complete and immediate comprehension, it scares the shit out of him.  It makes him feel like at any moment, she might _say it out loud_ , and then everything would be over.

So he doesn't mention it, and he rehearses an endless list of reasons why, and he repeats them over and over for so long that by now he has himself halfway convinced, as all the while he hides this secret, pulsing, white-hot thing buried inside his chest:

_Hope._

He has no proof, and there's no one he can tell, but still, all the same, he knows.

Somewhere out there, _Neal Caffrey is alive._   Peter did not fail him, has not lost him, didn't arrive too late.  He had only been, as he always was, one step behind Neal’s perfect con. 

He is alive, and someday Peter will find him.

* * *

 All the text says is “COME HOME. NOW” and it’s the longest drive of his life.

Jones asks him what’s wrong, is El okay, is the kid okay, but he doesn’t know, just races to the elevator so fast he knocks a stack of files off someone’s desk without even noticing whose, pounds the DOWN button over and over, taps his foot impatiently as the elevator stops at every goddamn floor, why is it so _slow_ , why is this _taking_ so long?, before it finally opens and he sprints like hell across the parking garage to run every red light on his way back home.

The door is unlocked, which makes his blood run cold, and he’s calling her name with panic choking his voice.  _Not her too, he can’t lose anyone else, he can’t lose El, he can’t lose his son, please, please . . ._

Then she steps out of the kitchen, baby in her arms, she’s okay, he’s okay, they’re both okay, but there’s a peculiar look on her face that he doesn’t know how to read.

“Are you okay?” he asks over and over, checking her for bruises, for distress, for any sign of what might be wrong, he’s frantic, she has to take his hand in hers and push him away for a moment to calm him down, so she can breathe.

“We’re okay,” she tells him, voice pulsing with emotion.  “Everyone is okay.”

“Then what . . .”

“I’m going to go put him down for a nap,” she says, not answering his question, voice still heavy and strange.  “I’ll give you a few minutes.  But I’ll be right here if you need me.”

“El, what are you – “

“Back door,” she says, and then disappears up the stairs.

Peter just stands there, in the middle of the living room, frozen, unable to move, his heart thudding with the agonizing, unbearable pulse of a hot, heavy _what if? what if? what if?,_ over and over and over again, and he’s staring at the back door like there’s a whole ocean in between him and it and he doesn’t know how to swim.

Then the door opens and he sees who’s standing on the other side of it, and the what ifs go silent as his heart stops beating altogether.

He’s smiling at Peter, but he doesn’t look happy.  There are bruises on his face, he’s lost his jacket somewhere and the shirt he’s wearing is only half-buttoned, shredded at the hem, the once-pristine undershirt beneath it dirty and ragged.  Blood-spattered, too, though he isn’t bleeding.  Someone else’s, then, like he’s been in a fight.  He looks at Peter with a ghost of his old charming persuasiveness, a shadow of that old sparkle in his eyes, but he isn’t trying very hard, he’s too tired to con anyone right now, it’s mostly just force of habit. He stands there on the other side of the ocean between Peter and the back door and he opens his hands in a curiously vulnerable gesture of entreaty and says simply, “I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”

And just like that, like a switch has flipped back on, the last two years fade away and the ocean between them vanishes and they’re both moving, pulled immutably towards each other by something stronger than gravity, that raw aching something that El knew the name of before Peter did, it roars up inside Peter like an inferno and he can’t do anything the moment Neal Caffrey is there in his arms except kiss him.

It’s a shock to his system, like electricity surging through.  So shocking it hurts.  Neal seems far less surprised by it, pausing in startled disbelief for only a moment before eagerly opening his mouth and pulling Peter inside, arms wrapping around him, warm and real and alive, so alive Peter can feel the skitter of his racing pulse as his hands clutch wildly at Neal’s jaw and his fingertips brush over his throat.  But Peter feels like he’s been hit by a runaway train, Peter hasn’t kissed anyone but his wife since the moment he met her, and he’s not sure which of the things currently happening to him is more astonishing: that he’s kissing Neal Caffrey, that he’s suddenly realized he’s always wanted to kiss Neal Caffrey, or that Elizabeth deliberately went upstairs to let him.

Neal being an extraordinary kisser is the least surprising thing about the whole situation, but what does astonish Peter is how _certain_ Neal’s mouth is on his.  Neal kisses him like someone who has thought about kissing him thousands of times, thought about it so often that the minute he’s faced with the opportunity he knows exactly what to do.  Neal being confident isn’t anything new, Neal’s always confident, always sure of himself, but this is different, this is too raw and urgent to be cocky.  Peter’s been wrong before, but he doesn’t think he’s wrong now. 

This isn’t a con.  This is real.

It was always real.

It’s also _infidelity_ , and it’s complicated, and there’s a story behind Neal’s blossoming purple bruises and bloodstained shirt that he knows he needs to ask about, and the longer this goes on the harder it will be to make himself stop, the floodgates are open now and there are images cycling through his mind that he can’t shut off now.  Images of things he didn’t know he wanted before this moment but he can’t un-know them now. 

He pulls away to catch his breath, gasping for air, chest rising and falling, hands still clutching Neal’s shoulders, not letting him go.  Neal’s panting too, arms tight around Peter’s back, and then he opens his eyes and looks up at Peter with something in his eyes that looks like happiness.

“Hi,” he says, and Peter bursts out laughing, something broken inside him suddenly repaired.

“Hi,” he says back.  “You son of a bitch.”

* * *

He doesn’t tell Jones anything over the phone, just says El and the baby are fine and he’ll fill him in tomorrow but he’s taking the rest of the day off.  Peter never takes days off, ever, so Jones is half thrilled he’s giving himself a damn break and half wild with curiosity, but he doesn’t ask any more questions.  Baby Neal naps upstairs while his namesake takes a shower, pulls on a pair of Peter’s comfortable old sweats (a clear sign that he’s in dire straits: Neal Caffrey in bureau sweatpants), and comes back downstairs to find Peter and El in the kitchen.  There’s coffee and sandwiches and he tells them everything.

He’s been all over Europe, London and Rome and Monaco, with brief stints in Dubai and Tokyo and Mexico City too, and he’s taken up a particular brand of something Mozzie refers to, with a distaste the Burkes can well imagine, as “Robin Hood-ing.”  Neal is still a thief and he always will be, but even with the Pink Panthers and the rest of the underworld convinced he’s dead and buried, a change of M.O. seemed like it might be a good idea anyway.  And Peter’s rubbed off on him, though of course he doesn’t quite admit this, but he doesn’t steal the same way he used to steal before.  His moral code is, well, _unconventional,_ but it’s specific.  Only steal from the very, very rich, preferably what he describes as “real assholes.”  One-third of the profits to him, one to Mozzie, and one to what he describes, rather evasively, as “people who need it.”  He’s laundering it carefully, he hastens to assure them, don’t worry, nobody innocent will get in trouble.  After all, when a Vermeer goes missing from some Saudi oil tycoon’s personal collection, and then suddenly an orphanage in Johannesburg or a children’s hospital in Minneapolis receive a hefty anonymous cash donation, nobody would think to connect the two together.  He assures Mozzie it’s perfectly safe, and it seems to assuage his conscience somewhat.  He wants Peter to know he’s changed, wants him to know he didn’t forget everything Peter taught him.

He sits there cheerfully confessing crime after crime, so many Peter loses count – or, rather, _almost_ confessing them, stopping just short of anything that would hold up in court, truths told in fragments with a wink and a smile, same old Neal Caffrey.  About the only thing he _doesn’t_ confess to is the thing that happened between the two of them in the ten minutes Elizabeth was upstairs.

It’s El who finally demands that he tell Peter the thing he told her, when he first showed up on their doorstep an hour ago.  They were made, him and Mozzie, on a gig in Paris, and had to split up.  June’s place was supposed to be the safe house, but he could tell the second he arrived that they’re having her watched; Neal spotted the guy on the park bench with the gun in his ankle right away, and two more at the newsstand, and made his way back to the subway before they spotted him.   

The subway was where the guy found him.

Neal’s careless with the details, doesn’t want to worry them, just a minor matter of a Serbian hired goon whose boss is furious about a missing Rodin (“Neal, did you steal it?” “Peter, I swear to God, I did not lay a _finger_ on that statue.”  “So Mozzie stole it.”  “Peter, I swear to God, I did not lay a _finger_ on that statue.”  “Never mind”).  But the hypothetical Rodin is turning out to be more trouble than it’s hypothetically worth, so Mozzie is – hypothetically – back in Paris busily designing a forgery he can “accidentally” leave in the fake workshop he rented under Neal’s real name which he knows the goons are watching, and then it will be over.  And the rich Serbian isn’t any too anxious to spread rumors that he was robbed by Neal Caffrey, since Neal Caffrey is dead, and oops Neal broke the goon’s phone before he could get a good picture, which means all he’s got is a misdemeanor charge for beating up a guy in a suit on the subway who disappeared before anyone could ask him any questions.  It will all be over as soon as the guy gets his statue back (“Hypothetically.”  “Right.  Of course.  Hypothetically”), Neal assures them, but he can’t go back to June’s and Mozzie’s safe houses are all burned, and besides he wanted to meet the kid.

Neal’s been rehearsing his reasons, too.  Neal, also, is telling himself a long list of stories to hide the real why.  All of the things he said are true, but the thing he doesn’t say is the most true thing of all (story of Neal’s life), which is that for the past two years he’s been seeing Peter Burke’s face in store windows too.

El is the one who keeps the conversation moving, who can be furious at Neal for his deceit and overwhelmed with joy to see him again, who draws out the story of what Neal did and how he did it, who hears with astonishment the story of all the clues that Neal left for Mozzie, and then Peter to find, knowing someday they would decipher them, and how Peter found them all but kept them to himself until he could be sure enough to tell her.  El is the one who says gently to Neal, “He hasn’t been the same since that day,” in a voice which causes both men to look suddenly away from each other and down at the floor, one in mortification and one in guilt.  El is the one who orders dinner – there’s a new Vietnamese place down the street they like, Neal needs to eat something, how long has it been since he had a hot meal – and opens the first bottle of wine, and then the second, and then does the dishes, and then pulls out the glass dish with half a rhubarb crumble they’d had on Sunday when the neighbors came over for brunch.  They talk about Europe and about the Bureau, about Mozzie and the baby and Jones and Diana and June and Sara – about everyone and everything, in fact, except for Peter Burke and Neal Caffrey.

Finally, inevitably, it’s El who can’t stand it anymore and brings the thing to a head.

 _“Neal,”_ she finally snaps, interrupting him in the middle of an amusing story about a particularly disastrous train trip through the Pyrenees.  “Stop talking.  _Now.”_

Neal stops talking.  He’s never heard her voice like this before.  She’s been puttering around the kitchen, boxing up the leftover Vietnamese food, plating dessert, serving it, making coffee, washing dishes, refilling coffee, putting the dessert back in the fridge, wiping down the counters, and the two men have been so wrapped up in each other that they haven’t noticed the simmer of irritation bubbling up inside her and boiling over into something like fury as she slams the dishrag in her hand down against the counter.

Neal stares at her blankly.  Peter does too.

“El,” Neal begins uncertainly, but fades immediately back into silence at the tears of fury that spring to her eyes.

“I have been waiting, and waiting, and waiting,” she says, her soft voice raw with emotion.  “You have been in this house for hours, and I have been waiting.  I have been waiting for you to say the thing I know you came here to say.  You think you can just skip past it, because saying it is hard, so you want to cut corners and fast-forward right back to the part where everything’s okay again.  But you cannot skip past this, Neal.  I held out as long as I could, but for two years I have watched this man – “  She stops, collecting herself, voice cracking a little.  “Two years,” she says again.  “Even if he suspected you were alive, that you were out there somewhere, he didn’t know.  You made him wait for two years, and you only came back because you needed something.”

“Elizabeth,” Neal whispers, voice hollow, face stunned and devastated, but she’s pinned him in place with her stare and he can’t break free.  “I never meant – you know, you both know, if there was any way – they had to think I was dead, Keller had to – “

“I don’t care about Matthew Keller,” she interrupts him impatiently.  “I care about Peter Burke.”

“It’s okay, El,” Peter says uncertainly, reaching out a hand for her.  “I’m okay.  It’s over now.  That’s in the past.  We’re okay.  We’re fine.”

El doesn’t hear him.  She’s still staring at Neal, eyes fierce and flashing.  “I know you,” she says.  “You came here because you needed to see him.  Because you knew you had to say it.  Because you knew you had to apologize.  I’ve been waiting for you to get around to it, but I’m out of patience, so before we do any more cute stories about Europe, fix the thing you destroyed.”

Neal swallows hard and can’t look at Peter anymore.  “Elizabeth,” he says uncomfortably, then trails off into silence, unsure where to go from there.

“You broke his heart,” El says quietly, and all the air goes out of the room.  “You broke my husband’s heart, Neal Caffrey, and I was the one here trying to pick up the pieces.  He thought you were dead, he thought it was his fault, he thought he failed you, and he might be too dumb to have figured out – “

“Hey now,” Peter protested.

“ – exactly why it was,” she went on, railroading right past him, “that losing you broke him the way that it did, he might have been to blind to see what was happening over the past seven years, but I wasn’t, and I don’t think you were either.”  Neal stares at her, miserable, trapped.  “You knew, didn’t you,” she says, and it isn’t a question.  “You always knew.”

“Not always,” he whispers, shoulders slumping, collapsing a little.  “Not from the beginning.”

“But before the end.”

“Yes.”

“You knew, and you still left him.”

“El – “

“Knew what?” Peter interrupts bluntly, irritated to feel so out of his depth in a conversation that’s ostensibly about him.  “What did both of you know that I didn’t know?”

And then El turns and meets his eyes, and it’s that look again, the look he’s been running from since the day Neal died, the look that unstitches his chest and pulls his heart out so El can hold it in her two hands and make him look at it.

“Peter, honey,” she says gently, like it’s the most obvious thing in the world.  “You’re in love with him.”

Then she kisses her shellshocked husband’s cheek, rests one warm hand on Neal’s chest just for a moment, and looks from one to the other.

“I’m going upstairs to bed,” she says in a clear, meaningful voice.  “Whoever wants to join me is welcome.  But work this out first.  Don’t bring it upstairs with you.”

“Elizabeth,” Peter chokes out, “what the hell?”

She sighs, patient, exasperated but a little fond.  “I know,” she says.  “You’re a little behind.  Neal will catch you up.”  Then she kisses him again and she’s gone.

* * *

 It’s silent for a long time after she leaves. 

Neal doesn’t speak, but he takes his coffee cup over to the sofa, and Peter follows.  They sit there quietly for a long time, the whole house dark and still.  They don’t turn the lamps on, so the kitchen is a little island of light in a nighttime sea, and the couch is dim with shadows.

It helps, some.  It was hard to do this in the light.  Elizabeth right there, seeing everything.  They can relax a little now.  Neal finishes his coffee, sets down the cup, and turns to Peter.  “Is it possible,” he begins carefully, “that your wife knew you were going to kiss me before you did?”

“Yeah,” says Peter, setting his own cup down.  “I kind of think that’s exactly what happened.”

“She’s something else,” Neal says, his smile warm and fond, and Peter’s always liked this about him, the way Elizabeth matters so much, the way Neal _gets_ her, the way Neal _sees_ her, the way Elizabeth is the only woman in his life who was never a mark first and a person second.

“Why’d you come back, Neal?” Peter asks bluntly, because after all, it’s time he said it.

Neal’s evasive suddenly, that slippery con man charm sliding back into place.  “Well, you know me,” he says lightly, “I just can’t stay away from this city for too long.”

“Neal – “

“You can’t get the right kind of pizza in Italy, I know, it’s crazy, I mean you can get _better_ pizza, but you can’t get _New York_ pizza, it’s just not the same, and every once in awhile – “

“Neal.”

“And no one’s ever named a kid after me, I mean come on, I couldn’t miss out on the chance to annoy Mozzie by convincing him the little guy likes his Uncle Neal better than his Uncle Teddy, you know that would make him crazy.”

“Stop,” says Peter gently, and Neal stops. 

It’s silent again for a long time.

“I couldn’t risk it,” he says finally.  “I thought about it so many times – I wrote so many postcards I didn’t send – but I couldn’t risk it.  If someone thought I was still alive, and that you knew about it and didn’t tell anyone . . . “

“It would have been worth the risk.  To know you weren’t dead.”

“Not to me,” Neal says.  “I already took too much away from you.  You already lost so much because of me.  Because you trusted me when maybe you shouldn’t have, and the Bureau knew it.  You paid the price for so many of my mistakes, and I didn’t want that to happen again.  I thought if I left, for real, for good, then you could be free of me.  Leave it in the past. Start over.”

“You’re an idiot,” Peter says gruffly, and Neal gives a sad little chuckle.

“Yeah,” he admits.  “I didn’t think it through.”  There’s a pause, and then Neal looks away, down at the carpet.  “She was right,” he tells Peter.  “I did need somewhere to go, and I did know I owed you an apology, and I did want to meet the kid, I wasn’t lying about any of that, but that isn’t why I came.”

“Then why?” Peter asks him, moving in closer, his hand gentle and strong on Neal’s shoulder. 

“You know why.”

“Say it anyway.”

“Peter – “

“Say it anyway.”

“Because I had to see you,” Neal snaps, the words so sharp they’re almost angry.  “El was right, she was right about everything, I did know, I could tell from the way you looked at me, not right from the start but at least for those last few years, I knew, and I knew you didn’t know, and then El said she was pregnant, and I knew as long as anyone thought I was alive, that the Panthers would keep sending people after me, even from jail they could do it, it wouldn’t matter, and you’d be in danger, all of you, Moz, June, El, Jones and Diana, the baby, as long as I was alive they’d never stop coming for me, and this was the only way I could keep any of you safe.  But I did know.  I knew I was hurting you.  I knew, and I did it anyway, because I had to, because you would only be safe if it looked real.  If it _felt_ real.  But I hated it every day.  I thought about you every day.  And when Mozzie told me I had to get out of Paris and lie low for a few days, I thought, maybe, if I go to New York – maybe, if there’s a way – I was going to do it better than this, I had a plan, I didn’t exactly mean to show up on your doorstep covered in the remnants of a Serbian bodyguard’s nosebleed, I was thinking dinner first, but I just . . .”  He stops, suddenly hesitant, seeing Peter stare at him with wide, staring, baffled eyes, mouth parted, frozen still.  “I just wanted to see you,” he says again, and this time when the kiss happens he doesn’t see it coming at all, breath collapsing out of his lungs in a whoosh as Peter’s mouth crashes into his.

It goes on for a long time, long enough for Neal to sink backwards and tug at the front of Peter’s shirt to pull him down against his chest, bodies pressed together, mouths frantic, hands everywhere, cocks beginning to rouse and stir and strain through layers of fabric towards each other.  “I’m sorry,” Neal murmurs into the skin of Peter’s throat, kissing his way down the hollow of muscle and tendon from ear to collarbone.  “I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”

“I love you,” Peter says, finding the words a sudden relief to speak out loud, now that all of them know it anyway.  “I love you.  I love you.” 

They have no idea how much time goes by before Neal’s hand, drifting between Peter’s thighs, cups the heavy weight and presses it gently, eliciting a rough groan from Peter and reminding them both that there’s a woman waiting for them upstairs.

“Peter,” Neal says uncertainly.  “If you don’t want . . . if you’re not comfortable . . .”

“I’m not in charge,” Peter says dryly, “El invited you, remember?  So I think we’d both better get going.”

Then he sits back on his heels to let Neal up, takes him by the hand, and leads him upstairs.


	2. Elizabeth

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "To be fully seen by somebody, then, and be loved anyhow – this is a human offering that can border on miraculous."  
> \--Elizabeth Gilbert

All the lights are off when they get upstairs, except for the lamp on Peter’s side of the bed.  There is, in both their minds, some residual doubt as to El’s intentions – a part of them that assumes she can’t possibly have meant what it sounded like she meant.  But all of that disappears once the bedroom door closes behind them.  There’s a third pillow on the bed now now, pulled from the guest room, and on a pretty little glass tray on Peter’s nightstand sit three foil-wrapped condoms, elegantly fanned out, beside a small bottle of lube and two rolled-up hand towels, one warm and damp, one dry.

“The service here is excellent,” Neal can’t stop himself from remarking, causing the still shape on the far side of the bed to stir sleepily and turn over, propping herself up on one elbow, chocolate-colored hair a silky curtain draped against creamy white skin.

“Hi,” she says with a drowsy smile, looking carefully from one to the other, sizing them up, watching to see how they are with each other now that they've crossed the threshold and everybody's here.  “I’m glad you stayed,” she tells Neal warmly.  “Are we all okay?  Is everyone okay?”

“Are _you_ okay?” Neal counters, brow furrowed, still trying to get the lay of the land.  “With this?  With –"  He gestures expansively, taking in himself, Peter, the condoms, the bed.  She laughs and sits up, leaning back against the headboard, giving both the men a better view of her gorgeous black and teal lace-trimmed push-up bra and her even more gorgeous full white breasts.  Neal's face blossoms into a broad, delighted grin.  “That doesn’t look like what you actually you sleep in,” he observes dryly.  “That looks like you were pretty damn sure of us.”

“You’re not the only one who’s good at reading people, Neal Caffrey,” she retorts, eyes sparkling.  “Now for God’s sake, get out of those sweatpants.  It's very disorienting to look at you in clothes that don't fit.”

"They were an upgrade from blood spatter, at least," he chuckles, voice muffled as he tugs the sweatshirt over his head.

"Only barely."

"You know these are Peter's."

"Peter is the kind of person who looks good in sweatpants."

"Peter is the kind of person who looks good in everything.  Which is fortunate, since most of his clothes are terrible."

"You're not the only one who's tried to get that message through to him.  I waited five years for you to take him in hand and inspire him to make some better wardrobe choices."

"From your lips to God's ears, Elizabeth," Neal sighs, amused, as sweatshirt, sweatpants, and sleek black cotton briefs land one by one on the floor and he steps, sleek and naked, across the room to the bed.

Peter watches the whole exchange - the flirting, the laughter, the blatant mockery of his sartorial choices - with his heart swelling inside his chest, an almost physical ache, like his love for them both is so vast his insides are opening up to contain it.  This kind of happiness isn't supposed to be possible.  Peter Burke is an ordinary guy, a by-the-book guy, a sweatpants, desk job, mows-the-lawn-on-Saturdays guy.  He was a rule-follower all his life, until Neal Caffrey showed up and casually turned everything sideways, but this has always been the one rule that was so ironclad it was impossible to break it.  It isn't that he has some kind of a rigid policy about not cheating on El; it's that the notion of cheating on El has genuinely never occurred to him.  An incomprehensible, alien thought.  To say Peter Burke had a rule about fidelity would be like suggesting a horse has rules about not flying.  Things are either in our nature, or not. 

This is why, for seven years, for all that time, until just this very moment, today, Peter Burke didn't know.  He didn't know love was the right word to call the thing between himself and Neal, because there was no way to navigate around the roadblock of Elizabeth in that equation.  That's why Neal (whose survival and livelihood depended on the ability to read every microexpression on a person's face to assess their weaknesses) and El (whose perfect faith in her husband's affection illuminated, rather than blinding her to, the thing that Peter couldn't see) knew about it years before he did.  It was just . . . too impossible for Peter to consider. 

But here it is anyway.  The thing he didn't even know he needed and now he knows he can never live without.  Love, without hurting anyone.  Love, without having broken a vow.  El wants this, wants Peter to have this, gave him permission again and again, made everything ready.  El is here in her prettiest lingerie with a smile on her face, holding out her hand, making everyone comfortable, keeping the mood easy and light, making the impossible come true, and a weight Peter hasn't even realized he was carrying for seven years drops away at the realization that he will never have to choose between loving one or the other because he can already see how ready and willing they both are to love each other, too.

Neal is alive, and Neal loves him, and Neal is here, naked and joyful and ready, making fun of Peter's sweatpants and climbing into Peter's bed to claim the pillow in the middle and curl up next to Peter's wife, leaning against her shoulder with a relaxed, proprietary ease, both of them watching Peter with expectant smiles like _he's_ the third and it's _their_ bedroom. 

A hot red flush sweeps over his cheeks as he realizes that they're waiting to watch him undress.

Peter doesn't really _do_ this, he's not without sophisticated bedroom moves but they're mostly related to all the stuff that happens once they're both already under the covers, and even though he never gets tired of unzipping El out of a sexy dress to watch her step out of it, it's never occurred to him that anybody could have that same level of breathless eagerness to watch him.  So he's awkward and uncomfortable about it, with their eyes roaming all over his body, he can’t make a striptease out of it or anything, he just takes off his clothes like a normal person, wondering if it’s not enough, if he's supposed to be performing more.  But they seem perfectly happy, watching him with softness and warmth and affection intermingled with lust and desire, and as his white undershirt and faded, unsexy boxers finally come off he has to remind himself to stop thinking of this like he suddenly woke up and found himself in a porn movie with no idea what he's supposed to do next, and to remember that these are the two people who know him best in all the world.  It's not like "having a threesome," it's Neal and Elizabeth.  He's safe here.

He's half-hard by by the time his shorts hit the floor, and he's trying not to be shy about it, but it's hard when Neal's gaze is burning so brightly, riveted by his first glimpse of Peter's cock.  Peter couldn't quite bring himself to look straight at Neal's, but Neal has no such qualms, he's staring at it openly, eyes full of want, taking everything in.  Peter feels his cheeks flush warm again, but he resists the urge to cover himself with his hands, though he's a little tense as he makes his way across the room to climb into the bed. 

Once he's under the covers, the same-and-different-ness of it hits him hard.  He's in his usual place, this is his usual pillow, and El is in her usual place too; but the warm naked body pressed up against his belongs to someone else.  Neal's skin is soft, like El's, and he showered with her soap so he even smells like her, but he's still so essentially, unmistakably Neal Caffrey that Peter feels dizzy.

Peter starts to say something, to apologize maybe, to confess he doesn’t quite know how to begin here, but it turns out not to be necessary.  Neal cradles his jaw in his hands with the same delicate touch Peter’s seen him use when he holds something cherished and priceless, holds him the way he would hold a diamond or a Faberge egg, and then he kisses Peter’s mouth with impossible sweetness, and suddenly everything feels easy and right.

There was a franticness to the way they kissed each other downstairs - relief and guilt and a little bit of anger the first time, grief and longing and desperate apology the second time.  But it isn't like that now.  They're here, they've arrived, there's no reason to rush, and all the hard things have been said, so they have time.  Peter lets Neal press him back onto the pillows and climb on top, cocks brushing against each other, shivery-sweet, kissing him and kissing him and kissing him.  Peter closes his eyes and disappears into Neal's gentle hands and smooth clean skin and hot, sweet mouth, and hears the mattress shift as El scoots closer to get a better look.  Light fingertips stroke his cheek, card through his hair.  With El touching him, encouraging him, all restraint melts away, and his hands begin to roam all over the taut, sleek planes of Neal's body - Neal's perfect body, too beautiful to hide under even the most perfect suits.  Neal is art, Neal should be sculpted, Neal should be on display in museums for other Neals to worship and steal.  Neal Caffrey and Elizabeth Burke, the two wonders of the world.  Too beautiful and perfect to deserve anyone lesser than each other, but they'd both chosen him instead.

Neal's mouth trails down Peter's neck to his chest, mouthing first one nipple, then the other, into hard brown peaks, making Peter clench his fists and inhale sharply, heat surging through the lower half of his body.  El kisses his forehead.  "Are you happy?" she whispers.  He nods, eyes closed, as Neal moves lower.  "Do you understand that you can have anything you want?" she whispers.  "From me, from him, from both of us. You just have to ask for it.  Anything you want, honey, it's yours."  Her hands tangle in Neal's thick hair, soft and silky and clean and still the faintest bit damp from his shower before dinner.  "You too," she tells him.  "Anything you want."

Neal smiles but doesn't look up, kissing his way down Peter's broad powerful chest until he finally reaches the heavy, pulsing weight between his thighs.  "I've got exactly what I want right now," he murmurs, "but are you saying you're also on the menu?"

Elizabeth laughs.  "I always liked Sara," she says dryly.  "As a matter of fact, I've liked a lot of them.  And I have to admit I have sometimes wondered what the hell it is you manage to do to get all those brilliant, competent, together women to totally lose their heads over you.  I suppose this could be my chance to find out."

Neal grins.  "Well, I had a nice view," he shrugs as he parts his lips and takes the tip of Peter's cock inside.

El laughs.  "Yes, I'm sure that was it."

"Very good view," Peter grunts in a low, rough voice, eyes fixated on the sight of Neal's mouth wrapped around his cock.  "And your apartment was nice too."

"You're doing good, Neal," El says, stroking his hair, pure delight in his voice.  "You've got him making stupid jokes.  That's how you know he's happy."

Neal smiles, mouth still full of cock, but doesn't answer, and slowly they feel themselves begin to settle into it.  A rhythm emerges.  El strokes Neal's hair, murmurs soft encouragements - "that's good, right there, he likes that" - brushing her knuckles over his cheek from time to time against the swell of Peter's cock.  Neal, unsurprisingly, is as good at this as he is at every skill which requires the ability to instantaneously read people's responses; every inhale and exhale, every twitch of Peter's muscles, is logged away carefully as information, and soon he doesn't even need El's direction because he's nailed it flawlessly, stimulating Peter exactly right, in all his favorite ways, to make him faint with pleasure but not yet letting him come.

Peter's eyes are closed and his head is foggy and everything is a blur except El's mouth on his mouth and Neal's mouth on his cock and four hands sliding gently all over his skin.  He has no idea how long it goes on before El softly tells Neal, "He'll come if you keep going like this, honey."

Neal lifts his head, Peter's cock sliding warmly and wetly out of his mouth with a soft pop.  "I don't mind."

"You will when he falls asleep," she says dryly.  "He's not as young as you are."

"Hey now," Peter protests, but feebly, both because he's still stoned on pleasure and because El's right. 

"Give him a breather," she tells Neal, "let him catch his breath before he has to really . . . you know.  Exert himself."

Peter looks at her.  Neal looks at her. 

Peter looks at Neal.  Neal looks at Peter.

"Peter, do you want to?" Neal asks in a small, low voice that's aching with need, the realest voice Peter's ever heard him use.  Peter can't speak, but nods, swallowing hard.  He does.  He really, really does.  It's written all over his face. 

El cups Neal's cheek in her own, pulling him towards her.

 “How do you like it?” she asks matter-of-factly, like all of this is normal, like she’s perfectly comfortable with this, like she’s asking how he likes his eggs.  “Is it easier for you if you’re more relaxed?”

“You mean, if I come first.”

“Right.”

“Are you offering?”

“If Peter doesn’t mind,” she says, shooting a look over Neal’s bare shoulder at her husband, lying on his side and watching them intently, breathing hard, skin flushed, heart racing.  He hears the things they aren’t saying, the plan they’re setting up. 

El wants to get Neal ready for him.

For him to . . .

Peter swallows hard.

“That okay with you, Peter?” Neal asks, quite a bit more uncertainty in his voice than in El’s.  He’s the one with something to lose here, the one who’s crossing an inviolable line if Peter says no.  “Are you cool with it if Elizabeth and I start things off to get you, you know, in the right mood?”

Peter’s mouth is dry suddenly, his voice comes out in a raspy whisper.  “Yeah,” he murmurs, rough, almost a growl.  “I’d like to see that.”

El beams, rolls over on her back and holds out her hands.  “All right, honey,” she says, “show me those famous Neal Caffrey moves.”

“I never say no to a lady,” he says gallantly, and has her bra flying through the air to land haphazardly on the arm of the chair before she even realizes what he’s done. 

El bursts out laughing.  “Oh, it’s gonna be like that, is it?”

Neal shrugs, grinning.  “You said you wanted the moves.  That’s one of my moves.”

They’re giddy, like kids at Christmas.  It’s wild and new and exciting for the two of them, but it isn’t fraught in the same way it is between the two men.  There’s so much _gravity_ between Peter and Neal, so many years of unspoken things, so much grief that healed crooked and left them a little off-kilter.  It’s easier, somehow, with Elizabeth, the way she makes everything easier, the way she always knows what people need.  Peter watches, feeling warmth sweep through his whole body as El settles comfortably against the pillows and Neal shifts his weight, moving on top of her.  His hands slide down the sides of her body and disappear beneath the covers, then suddenly stop short and he looks at her with a raised eyebrow that’s almost accusatory.  She gives a sheepish little shrug, chuckling a little like he’s caught her at something.

“I see,” Neal murmurs dryly.  “Didn’t feel like waiting, did you?”

“Well, I didn’t know how long I’d be waiting, did I?  For all I knew you’d spend the whole damn night sitting on that couch in the dark, not saying things.”

“So you took matters into . . . your own hands.”

“In a manner of speaking.”

“Naughty,” says Neal in a low voice, leaning in to rest his forehead against hers and tug lightly at her plush, rosy lower lip with his own.  “Bad girl.”  El’s hips lift, and Peter can tell Neal’s playing with her a little.  She bites her lip, flushes, tosses her head a little against the pillow, all telltale signs that her clit is getting a little gentle action, the way she likes it best.  “I was ready to start from scratch, but you’re just all warmed up and ready to get to it, aren’t you?”

“It’s been a little while,” El confesses, and Neal goes still on top of her, the playfulness dropping away, hearing all the things she’s saying in between the simple words.  He turns back to Peter suddenly, as if for confirmation, and the naked anguish on Peter’s face is answer enough.

“Peter?” Neal asks uncertainly.  But Peter can’t take this one for them, Peter still can’t quite say it, so El steps in again, hands on Neal’s face, bringing him back to her.

“The best we ever had was always when he was chasing you,” she whispers.  “When he was working with you.  When you closed a case together, when you went on adventures.  When things were good between you two, it was . . . it was like he became someone new.  You brought out so much _life_ in him, Neal.  From the very beginning, even when you made him crazy.  The old Peter sparkle came back times a hundred.  The best nights we ever spent together, you were always there with us, a little bit.  I don’t think he realized that’s what it was, I don’t think it was conscious for him.  It was just . . . the way you made him come alive.”  She pauses, giving Neal a moment to take this in before she has to reveal the inevitable dark side to the equation, before she has to say the thing that will hurt.  “You brought him to life,” she says quietly.  “So when you died, that Peter did too.”

Neal stares down at her like she’s slapped him across the face.  “It’s been two years,” he says, something like fear in his voice.  “Have you two . . . have you not . . .”

“It’s better now,” she assures him, stroking his hair.  “There was a night, a little less than a year ago . . . just before Mozzie disappeared, it must have been when he found the storage unit – “  Peter can’t look at them anymore, pieces clicking together in his mind, wondering how he could have been so monstrously, appallingly, stupidly blind.  “And it’s come back, a little, since then.”

“It came back when he started to believe I was still alive,” Neal breathes, stunned, like the magnitude of this admission, the depth of what it means, has entirely unstitched him.  El nods, gentle and serene, not trying to wound or even shock him, just trying to make him see.

“But before then, almost nothing for a year,” she says.  “And even after that day, it didn’t go back to the way it used to be.  It wasn’t the same.  Until now.”  She cradles Neal’s face in her hands, gentle and strong and insistent.  “You were always a part of our marriage, it’s just that none of us knew it,” she explains.  “Least of all Peter, the one it was really happening to.  But we always needed you.  From the day you came into our lives, you’ve _mattered._   No one else has ever mattered this much.  You changed everything.”  She kisses him lightly.  “We’ll understand if this is only for a few days while you lie low and then you disappear again to Seville with Mozzie,” she says.  “But don’t forget, that isn’t your only option.  This time, instead of leaving, you could stay.”

Neal looks down at her, face raw and open.  He can’t look at Peter and Peter can’t look at him.  All the difficult things have to filter through El right now, so she can smooth down the sharp edges and deliver them without hurting anyone more than she absolutely has to.  But the magnitude of this has blindsided Neal and she can tell he needs a minute before they get back to it.  So she just strokes his hair with one hand as the other slides gently up and down his bare back, tripping lightly over the notches of his spine, soothing him.

“I don’t even know what that means,” he says finally.  “To stay.  To stay in one place.  With one person.  People.  I don’t even know what that would look like.”

“We don’t have to figure it all out tonight,” she reminds him.  “We don’t have to do this right now.  But it felt important that you know.  You’re not just a one-night stand to us, Neal.  Peter loves you.  In time, if he gives himself permission, if he stops holding it all inside, if he trusts that you won’t disappear one day and break his heart all over again, I think he could love you the same way he loves me.  I think it’s that much.  I think the foundation is all there.  And I think you and I could get there too.  But we’re not like Sara and Alex, Neal, Peter and I, if we let ourselves go, we’ll never be people who can just pop in and out of your life and be casual with you.  The cost for having all of us is that you have to give us all of you.”

Neal can’t think of anything to say to this, but he doesn’t need to.  He feels the warmth of Peter’s body, skin on skin, Peter’s hand on him, gliding along his skin from the nape of his neck down to the curve of his ass, up and down, stroking, soothing, like he’s gentling a spooked wild animal.  Neal closes his eyes, shivers into his touch, revels in how _proprietary_ Peter’s touch is, like Neal _belongs_ to him, like Neal is _his._

“I can’t stop you from being gone when we wake up in the morning,” Peter says, voice gruff and low.  “Halfway to Panama with our wallets and passports.”

“Peter, I would never – “

“I can’t stop you,” Peter says again, cutting off his protests.  “I can’t keep you from leaving.  I never could.  But I’d sure like it if you stayed.”

Neal can’t not kiss him for saying something like that, and it’s only half an answer but it’s enough for now.  He indulges himself for a little while, savoring the deliciously wicked sensation of making Peter gasp and groan into his mouth, before he feels Peter draw back and settle in beside them, warm strong body curled protectively against them both.  “You two promised me a show,” he reminds them both lazily, head propped up on his elbow, looking expectantly from his wife to Neal and back again.  “We got a little sidetracked.”

“We did,” El agrees, one soft white thigh lifting to wrap around Neal and pull him against her.  “Neal has some moves to show me, I believe.”

“Well, let’s see ‘em,” says Peter agreeably, hand still warm and heavy and sweet on Neal’s skin, resting comfortably in the hollow at the base of Neal’s spine, fingertips just grazing the rising swell of his taut, muscular ass, brushing it with whisper-soft touches, like he’s getting to know it, like he’s thinking about –

And there it is, Neal’s rock-hard again, and El’s warm and wet and eager, and Peter’s right here, coaxing him onward, so he plunges in deep and smooth and doesn’t hold back, bottoming out inside her on the first thrust, all the air rushing out of his lungs in a low, wild gasp of pleasure as El rocks up to meet him.

And then they’re off, fucking with the instinctive ease of people who have been doing this for years, everything fitted together perfectly, everything clean and true and just right.  He doesn’t need to be told anything about what El Burke likes in bed, half of it he’s extrapolated just from getting to know her, the other half he figures out as he goes.  It’s what Neal Caffrey does best – assess and then improvises, find the cleverest solution for the best result.  But he’s not trying to con Elizabeth, he’s never tried to con Elizabeth (well, all right, he knows Elizabeth has been a victim of the times he’s managed to con Peter, but that’s collateral damage, and anyway those days are over), he’s just that good at figuring out how to give people exactly what they want and become exactly who they want him to be.  And what Elizabeth wants him to be is real with her, all artifice gone, so he does that, he gives her that, but he can’t switch off the part of his brain that’s always scanning for alarms and tripwires, he can’t stop observing, so nothing Elizabeth does is too minor to escape his notice.  Where she likes to be touched, where she doesn’t.  How deep, how fast, how hard.  How to surprise her.  How to make her bite her lip to keep from screaming so loud she’d wake the baby.

And through it all, there is Peter, his warm touch on Neal’s skin, his low voice in Neal’s ear, his lips from time to time against Neal’s shoulder or in his hair.  It’s intoxicating, the future El offered him, and Neal can’t stop thinking about what it would be like to feel Peter touch him like this every day.

When El comes – her first really shattering orgasm in a good long while – she comes with her whole body.  Her hips rise up off the bed, legs wrapping around Neal’s waist, hands clutching frantically at his back, head tossing back and forth on the pillow.  A flush of rose-pink sweeps over her face and neck and breasts, a faint sheen of sweat making her skin glow at her brow and temples.

He’s unreasonably pleased with himself – more so when he feels Peter lean in to nuzzle deep into the back of his neck and lick hot kisses into his skin.  “That was good,” Peter whispers.  “Really good.  Now it’s your turn.”

“Peter . . .”

“Let me watch you come,” Peter whispers.  “Let me hear you.  Let me see you.”

“I’m . . .”  Neal swallows hard, cock aching, ready for release.  “I’m real close, Peter.  I’m almost there.”

“Good, Neal, that’s good,” Peter says, voice low, breath warm on Neal’s skin.  “You can finish inside her.”

“Peter . . .”

“I’m right here,” Peter whispers, “I’m not going anywhere.”  He kisses Neal’s shoulder.  “Let go,” he murmurs into the warm smooth skin, and El’s eyes glow up at him, smiling, inviting, hips lifting back up towards him again, urging him onward.  So he picks back up again, accelerating, feeling the rise and rise of an earth-shattering climax swell up inside him.  Peter disappears for a moment, and Neal almost stops to call his name, tug him back, but then all the air stutters out of his lungs as he feels a warm, slick, lubricated finger gently, tenderly stroke him open.

“Oh, Jesus, Peter . . .” he chokes out, shuddering with pleasure.  El smiles up at him, cups his cheek, nods, silently urging him on, giving him permission.  _You can have anything you want,_ she had said, and he wants _this,_ he wants the warm wetness of her cunt, silky and slippery like ripe fruit, holding him inside, as Peter’s deft fingers glide in and out, twisting, stretching, perfect angle, perfect pressure, has he _done_ this before?, oh God, he has, hasn’t he, he knows exactly what he’s doing, he’s unlocked some infallibly precise reservoir of muscle memory, coaxing Neal open to him – not that Neal needs much coaxing.  Peter’s far from Neal’s first – he’s not even Neal’s first this _month_ – but Peter’s big, and knows it, so a little limbering up is a pretty good idea, and Peter’s doing everything right.  Neal melts into them, into El’s cunt and Peter’s hands, he feels his hips buck and shudder against El’s as the pressure mounts and mounts.

Then Peter turns his hand, crooks his finger like he’s beckoning, and finds Neal’s prostate, and it’s all over.

Neal comes with a groan that’s almost a scream, and El gasps at the rush of it as he bursts hard and deep inside her, again and again and again.  “Oh,” she murmurs, eyes wide, as Neal thrusts and thrusts, desperate, urgent, tidal waves of force crashing against him.  “Oh, honey.  Come here.”  She puts her arms around his back and pulls him down to collapse onto her breast, closing his eyes, breathing hard, shattered by the force of it, as Peter gently extracts his finger and begins to stroke the smooth skin of Neal’s ass with soothing, gentle strokes. 

For a long time, it’s just that, it’s Peter’s warm touch and El’s soft body, cradling him, enveloping him, like he suddenly understands what they meant before, what they want from him.  Neal’s used to being taken care of in bed, sure, but in a transactional way; he’s used to getting what he wants, and he’s willing to perpetuate whatever convenient illusions are necessary in order to get it.  Sometimes that means the role he plays is generous, sometimes demanding, but even when he’s receiving he’s used to being in control.  This is . . .

But he doesn’t let himself say the word out loud, even in his mind, even though Peter’s already said it, and Elizabeth has too.  Not just yet.  He doesn’t want to jinx it, doesn’t want to risk this run of good luck coming to an end.  It still feels like a miracle, like a trick, like they’re the con artists and he’s the mark being swept off his feet, he feels too unmoored to be sure of anything.  It doesn’t feel real yet.  It can’t possibly be real.

Then a pair of warm, powerful arms wrap him up, hold him close, lay him down against the pillows, and suddenly it’s real.

“Neal,” Peter whispers, but Neal can’t say anything, just looks up at him, at that face he’s ached for every day for the past two years.  Peter’s not handsome the way Neal is handsome, smooth and polished without a hair out of place.  And he’s not handsome in the way that Elizabeth is beautiful, glowing with that radiant inner light, soft silk around a core of steel.  No one else in the Bureau, probably, would call Peter Burke a handsome man.  But he’s _beautiful_ to Neal, he’s _dazzling_ , he’s strong and solid and honest and real, and everyone else stands in shadow when Peter Burke is there.  Neal’s pretty the way trivial, glittering things are pretty, he’s always known this about himself and he doesn’t really mind.  He’s shiny and sparkly, he’s _ornamental._   His face is a map of himself, and he looks like the things that he steals.  But Peter Burke is beautiful the way the Rocky Mountains are, he’s beautiful in the way of permanent things, he’s beautiful like oxygen or gravity or the rising and setting of the sun, he’s beautiful like the kind of things you can set your watch by, the things that never get up in the night and leave you.  Even now, hair mussed from the pillows, square jaw softened with a half-smile that’s almost shy, he’s so beautiful Neal’s knocked the fuck out by it, and he’s mortified by the feeling of a lump in his throat, like he might suddenly ruin the mood just as the thing’s about to happen by bursting into tears in front of them.

It's love, the thing that makes Peter beautiful.  In all his life, no one has ever loved Neal Caffrey as bluntly and unapologetically and nakedly as this.

“Neal,” Peter says again, a question, a plea, an invitation. 

“Yes,” Neal says, tugging him down for a kiss.  “Please.  Please.  Yes.”


End file.
